Our results demonstrated that the high expression of fibronectin and snail and the low expression of E-cadherin were significantly associated with the gain of Hes1 expression in EMT, invasion and metastasis of NPC, suggesting that Hes1 plays an important role in triggering EMT in NPC specimens, which was consistent with the results of in vitro studies described above. This evidence concerns the gene SNAI1 and nasopharyngeal carcinoma.